


Love All

by Aramley



Category: Wimbledon
Genre: First Time, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:04:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love All: a term to describe that situation where neither side has made any score.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sperrywink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sperrywink/gifts).



> Set during the 1995 Italian Open, although much liberty has been taken with the real-world results of that tournament.

"I've a good feeling about this tournament," said Peter, nodding firmly as though deciding it would be so would make it so.

Dieter, leaning back against the headboard of Peter's hotel bed, smiled. "Yes?"

"Yes," said Peter, decisively. He did, Dieter conceded silently, have good cause to be pretty confident about his chances. It had been a good year for him, so far - the quarters at the Australian Open, a handful of semi-finals and one final in Miami had left him flush with ranking points, and from a starting point down in the thirties he was edging into the top fifteen of the world. And, strangely for an Englishman, he'd always liked the clay tournaments.

For Dieter, the clay season was about trying not to lose to as many Spaniards and South Americans as possible.

"I saw Billi today," said Peter, meaning Billi Clementi. She and Peter had played some mixed doubles back in their junior days, and remained good friends since. Dieter liked her too - funny and direct, with playful wickedness in her dark eyes. Peter reached down into the minibar to pull out another pair of cold beers - their third, because their first matches were a day away. Still, it felt strangely illicit, sitting in Peter's hotel room and drinking beer from the minibar.  "She's a lesbian, you know," Peter said, coming to settle on the bed next to Dieter, leaning back against the headboard. "But of course, she can't tell her sponsors."

"Oh," said Dieter. He opened his beer with the bottle opener in the shape of a tennis racket that Peter handed him, and took a slow drink while Peter watched him was a curious, oddly speculative look. "Have you ever kissed a man, Dieter?"

Dieter managed to keep from snorting beer out of his nose, but it was a close-run thing. "Have I - for goodness's sake, Peter."

"Really, Dieter, I thought you Germans were into all sorts of kinky stuff," said Peter, leaning back with a grin. He nudged Dieter's elbow with his own.

"And I thought you Brits' upper lips were far too stiff for this sort of talk," Dieter shot back.

"Underneath the gloss of middle-class Britain smoulders a furnace of repressed sexuality, Dieter," said Peter, with mock-serious look. "Our empire positively ran on it."

Dieter smirked. "I thought that was steam."

"Yes, well, what they did was throw buckets of cold water over some middle-class Victorian ladies and that's how - you see, you're laughing, but it's really our best kept secret."

"You are not right, my friend," said Dieter, laughing helplessly, shaking his head. "Too much tennis. It's gone to your brain."

"It's possible," said Peter, and then, thoughtfully, "You know, really, tennis is just another example of this repressed British sexuality. Only the British could have invented tennis."

"Hm," said Dieter, putting his chin into his hand in a pose of rapt attention. "How so, professor?"

"Well," said Peter, "think of it. Two people, facing each other across the court, completely wrapped up in each other. All that power and agression, you know, thrusting the ball back and forth between them."

"So," said Dieter, slowly. "What you are essentially saying is that tennis is an erotic act?"

"Yes," said Peter, decisively, then slumped against Dieter, hiding his face against his shoulder. "Oh God, I'm talking a lot of bollocks, aren't I?"

"Some," said Dieter, smiling as Peter put his face into his hands and bumped his head against the sharpness of Dieter's shoulder as if to knock the nonsense out.

"I blame the jetlag," he said, from behind his fingers, "and the beer. And a lifetime of careful abstinence for making me such a lightweight." He let his hands drop down to his lap, but didn't move to sit back up, just kept on leaning there against Dieter's side, his breath hot against Dieter's skin.

"I should get back to my room," said Dieter, conscious of Peter's warm weight. He didn't allow himself to turn his head and look at Peter's ruffled pale blond hair against his shoulder. He stayed very still. "We have practice tomorrow, right?"

"Right," said Peter, muffled against Dieter's t-shirt, but he didn't move. "You know," he said, twisting his head to look up at Dieter, "you didn't answer my question from before."

"What question?"

"Have you ever kissed a man?"

"It's getting a little late for jokes, Peter," Dieter said, annoyed in spite of himself.

"Don't be angry with me," said Peter, knocking the backs of his fingers lightly against Dieter's wrist. It was a playful, affectionate touch, one that sent little sparks all the way along Dieter's arm.

"Well, what about you," said Dieter, sharper than he'd intended. He tried so hard, he did; and now Peter was making it so difficult. He looked down at Peter's flushed face. "Have you ever -?"

Peter grinned up at him. "I went to a boys' boarding school," he said, and Dieter didn't know entirely what that meant but there was enough lurking in Peter's expression that he could hazard a guess, and almost unthinking he leaned down and slanted his mouth over Peter's, swallowing Peter's little surprised huff of laughter greedily.

"Dieter Prohl," said Peter, mock-scandalised, grinning, when Dieter pulled back. "There's my answer, then."

"Sorry," Dieter said, fighting the urge to pass his fingertips across Peter's swollen lower lip, thinking I did that, oh God. "I'm - Peter, I'm sorry."

"Oh, for God's sake," Peter said, fisting one hand in the fabric of Dieter's t-shirt. "It's the English who are supposed to be bumbling and apologetic."

"On behalf of my nation, I apologise," said Dieter, and then Peter kissed him again.

-

"You know," said Peter, after practise the next day. "That was great. I feel great. I think all these people who say you shouldn't fool around before matches, you know, they should just try it."

"Sure," said Dieter, mopping sweat from his face and arms offhandedly. He felt good, too, his muscles aching in a sweet, satisfying way. His elbow wasn't hurting. His backhand had been a thing of precise beauty. More than that, he was - happy. Bright, vital. He let his knee fall against Peter's, and laughed when Peter batted it with his racket.

The giddy feeling lasted through his first round match - a blessedly quick straight sets win. The heavy slog of baseline hitting had felt almost easy and light, and he'd glided across the clay with more assurance and grace than he'd ever felt before on the surface.

"You were great today," Peter told him later, slinging an arm around his shoulders as they met in the players' lounge. He was lit up with his own victory, bright and brilliant with it. "Really great."

"You too," said Dieter, patting Peter's hip lightly, grinning. He'd managed to catch a few highlights of Peter's match and found himself caught, as always, by the elegant simplicity of Peter's game, and his victory over his opponent had been as neat and clean as a dissection.

"So, tonight," Peter said, giving Dieter a sleazy grin over his tray of food. "I'm thinking more practice, yeah?"

-

"God," Peter gasped, later, safe in the darkness of his hotel room, resting his sweat-slick forehead against Dieter's shoulder. "How - how is it so much better when it's your - when it's someone else's hand?"

Dieter resisted the urge to comb the fingers of his free hand through Peter's cropped blond hair, or brush his lips against the hot skin at Peter's temple. "I don't know, he said, then mouthed against the soft shell of Peter's ear, "Maybe I'm just that fucking good, yeah?"

"Fuck," said Peter, lifting his hips into the tight trap of Dieter's fingers, "Maybe you are," following it with a choked-off moan and a gasp as he came over Dieter's hand.

"We should keep doing this," Peter said, when they lay side-by-side together on Peter's bed, panting and sweaty after he had repaid Dieter's favour. "Keep practicing together, keep doing, well," he said, smiling, "everything together.

Tennis was a lot about talent - latent talent built into a player's bone and muscle, and talent trained with hours and months and years of hard practice - but it was a lot about luck, too. In tennis, luck becomes something tangible. A player on a winning streak comes to believe that he can reach out and take hold of his own luck, pin it down in ritual: in using the same rackets, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, practicing with the same man. Fucking the same man.

"My good luck charm," Dieter teased, digging a finger into Peter's side just to feel him squirm.

-

Except for the fact that Dieter was now having sex with his best friend, things continued in much the same way that they always did during a tournament. He and Peter practised every day, as they always did. He took a lot of taxis between the hotel and the tournament, spent a lot of time hanging around the players' lounge on the off-days and a lot of time waiting in the locker room on the days he played. Aside from the fact that he was having sex with his best friend, the only real difference was that he kept on _winning_, and winning _well_.

"You know, there really does seem to be something to this," Peter said, with his hand performing some complicated and wonderful movement down in Dieter's unbuttoned jeans. They'd both won their third-round matches, and Peter had been flushed and giddy with triumph when he'd dragged Dieter in through the door of his hotel room and pinned him to the wall, because the victory assured him enough points to move up a spot in the rankings: thirteen in the world. Within striking distance of the top ten. "If we keep this up, we'll be Grand Slam champions by the end of the year."

Dieter, with his head thrown back against hard plaster, gasped, "Don't tempt the gods."

Peter just smiled, sharp-edged, and bit at the line of Dieter's throat, his stubble rasping against the sensitive skin.

-

"That," said Billi, regarding the mark on Dieter's neck with a sly smile the next day in the player's lounge, "is a very interesting bruise, no?"

"It's a shaving burn," said Dieter, taking a sip of his water while Billi and Peter exchanged significant looks - and really, he thought, that was a bit rich coming from Peter, who'd bitten the bruise there, sharp and entirely unrepentant.

And then Peter added insult to injury by leaning forwards over the table and saying, "So, who is the lucky lady, Dieter?"

"No ladies," said Dieter. "Honestly. You know I only have eyes for you," he added, putting a hand over his heart as he cast Billi a doe-eyed look. She met his eyes with a look that was unconvinced, and more knowing than Dieter was comfortable with.

"No ladies," said Billi. She shrugged. "Well, be careful when you shave tomorrow, no. People might talk."

"They can't talk if there's nothing to talk about," said Peter brightly. He glanced down at his watch. "Shit, I have to run, I have a press thing. Ciao," he said, kissing Billi affectionately on both cheeks; she smiled up at him as he pushed back his chair and rose. "Later, Dieter, yeah?"

Dieter nodded. "Later."

He watched Peter leave. When he turned back to Billi, he found her watching him quietly in turn.

"Dieter," she said, leaning forwards just slightly, putting her hand on his wrist. "Be careful."

He smiled, affecting ignorance. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, don't fall in love with him," she said, tipping her head to one side, her dark eyes soft and a little sad. "It never comes to no good."

"I'm not in love with him," Dieter said. Lied.

-

The thing was, Dieter had been in love with Peter mostly since the first time they'd met at junior Wimbledon nearly - good God, could it really be? - six years ago, now.

He'd known he was gay already, in a kind of abstract way, because it was pretty hard to ignore the way his body reacted in the locker room, or the way his fantasies were filled not with ample blondes but with bright, shining boys with lean tennis players' bodies.

And then there was Peter Colt, who'd beaten him in two smooth sets then shaken his hand with long, cool fingers at the net, saying, "That was awfully hard luck; it was closer than the score." In the locker room, when he should have been limp with disappointment, Dieter hadn't quite been able to stop himself from shooting guilty glances out of the corner of his eye over at Peter while he undressed, exposing the neat spare lines of his back, the dusting of freckles across his pale shoulders. Afterwards, Peter had come over to shake Dieter's hand again, saying, "I did like your game, your backhand is lovely. Maybe we could be practise partners, next time?" And Dieter, with his faltering schoolboy English, had blushed awkwardly and said yes, of course, and watched Peter go with a wistful feeling, because these budding friendships so rarely came to anything in the end.

But then, at the next tournament, there was Peter, turning up at Dieter's practice tournament with his father in tow and a bright, friendly grin, saying, "Are we still on, then, for practice?" and Dieter had felt his stomach constrict and his blood go fizzy with joy as he smiled and said of course, yes, watching Peter take up position on the opposite baseline.

"Peter and Dieter," Peter had mused later, while they passed a bottle of water back and forth between them on the bench. "It even rhymes. See, it's fate."

"Fate," Dieter had echoed, grinning, brushing his fingers against Peter's when he took the bottle just for the brief thrill of it.

Dieter had gotten better, over the years, at containing and managing his boyhood infatuation turned sweet, lingering unrequited love. It didn't hurt to love Peter, or certainly not more than it hurt to lose to Peter, when they played. Peter had never known - never even suspected - did not know even now, as far as Dieter knew, so easy and lighthearted was he about their ritual fumbling. For Dieter, it was dangerous, of course - he had to be so careful to keep his touches light rather than possessive, to fight the way he sometimes wanted to suck obvious bruises onto Peter's throat or leave the purpling imprints of his fingers at Peter's hips. Twinned to the desire to claim was the desire to be claimed by Peter. He thought sometimes about asking Peter to fuck him, but he thought that even Peter's good-natured experimentation might balk at that.

So he kept it easy, casual - laughing kisses and messy handjobs, and all the while saved up every look of Peter's - his flushed cheeks and bright eyes and the way his mouth went slack and soft when he came, that gave him a surprised look, as though he hadn't expected it. The way he murmured gentle encouragements to Dieter when he panted right before he came; come on, come on, yes, oh, that's it. The slope of his pale shoulders in the gold light of the bedside lamp as he stretched out, sleepy and sated, smiling at Dieter with his eyes heavy-lidded and dark.

"I should get back to my room," said Dieter, making to move from the bed. Their quarter-final matches were the next day.

"Oh, don't," said Peter, muffled and half-asleep against Dieter's shoulder. "I'm just nodding off. It's going to take me ages to get comfortable again if you leave now."

Dieter shut his eyes, letting himself inhale the scent of Peter's hair and the rougher, more familiar smells of musk and sweat. "Fine," he murmured, his eyes already falling shut. He turned into Peter's body, so that they pressed together more closely, and felt Peter throw an arm across his waist, his hand coming to rest lightly in the smooth hollow of Dieter's back.

-

Dieter didn't play badly - it was just that the young Argentine across the net played better. That was tennis. You played your heart out, but there was always a winner, always a loser. Heavy-limbed and aching with exhaustion, all the elation gone out of him, he showered quickly and dressed and went to the player's lounge to watch Peter lose his match against the world number three.

Seeing Peter give his opponent a well-meaning but obviously devastated handshake, something heavy and chill began to settle in the pit of Dieter's stomach. He thought about going to the locker room to meet Peter as he came in from the court. Instead, he found himself taking a taxi back to the hotel, drawing down the blinds against the bright Italian sun, and sinking down onto the bed to sleep away the ache in his body and the other, less physical ache.

-

When he woke, the bright edging to the blinds was red-gold with sunset, and he dragged a hand across his face to clear the sleep-sand from his eyes and felt the ache in his muscles before he really remembered where he was, what had happened.

Peter's face as he opened the door to his room when Dieter had managed to drag himself up and out to go and call on him, was just as exhausted, with a faint redness around his eyes that Dieter carefully ignored as he stepped past Peter into the room, which was a catastrophe of scattered tennis gear and clothes.

Dieter turned. "You are packing?"

"Yeah," Peter said, a little sheepishly. "I'm going to fly home tonight, get some rest before I go on to Paris. You're going home for a while, right?"

"Yes," said Dieter. He cleared a space for himself at the foot of Peter's bed and perched there on the edge, looking up at Peter, who crossed his arms across his chest and nodded slowly, looking distant and serious. "So we will see each other in Paris, then."

"Paris, yeah," said Peter. He grabbed a discarded t-shirt from the floor and began to fold it with quick abstracted motions. Dieter watched the line of his back as he turned away. Paris and the French Open was two weeks away; time enough, Dieter hoped, to wear away some of the friction. He'd known, really, that it would end this way, and there was something about Peter's look, like a man who'd woken from a dream, that gave him no hope.

"Well," said Peter, with a low breath of laughter. "Turns out it wasn't so good for us after all."

"Maybe," said Dieter, wishing he could make some joke to break the heaviness. "Well, it was fun while it lasted," he tried, but something in the tone of his voice was off, and the words came out sharp rather than bright.

"Right," said Peter, with the same slight strain and a tight smile. He was avoiding Dieter's eyes.

"So," Dieter said, pushing himself up from the bed. "I suppose I will see you in Paris, then."

"Paris," Peter echoed. He stepped forward and, after a brief moment's hesitation, folded Dieter into a quick, determined hug. "Take care."

"You too," said Dieter, squeezing Peter briefly before he let go - and then, as an afterthought, grabbed Peter's face in his two hands and pressed a loud kiss to Peter's cheek, laughing at Peter's expression as he pulled back. "You are so easy," he said, laughing, feeling something in his chest loosen slightly.

"Wanker," Peter complained, rubbing at his cheek with one hand while he batted at Dieter with the other, but he was really smiling this time, and his laugh was free and genuine. "Get out of my room!"

"Such is friendship." Dieter sighed heavily and shook his head with theatrical solemnity as he walked over to the door. "Safe flight, Peter, and good luck for Barcelona," he said, pausing before he left.

"You too," said Peter, with a smile. "And, listen, try not to lose too early this time, will you? I'm thirteen in the world now - I don't want to leave you behind altogether."

"Thirteen," said Dieter. "Isn't that an unlucky number?"

Peter's response was to throw a pair of dirty socks at Dieter. Dieter stepped back, laughing, and let the door swing shut behind him.

 


End file.
